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Samba

Effective 2012/08/07

This page describes the Samba/CIFS service effective 2012/08/07, when important changes were made to the way the service operates. If you are having trouble with Samba/CIFS after that date, please double-check the below instructions.

Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file services to SMB/CIFS clients. Samba runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as GNU/Linux, Solaris, and the BSD variants, including Apple's Mac OS X. It is standard on virtually all distributions of Linux and is commonly included as a basic system service on other Unix-based systems as well.

The CS department uses CIFS shares to share files to personal desktop machines and laptops for access to home directories, web space, and project space.

You will need to setup your CS CIFS Password in order to use Samba/CIFS. More information about setting up your password can be found here.

Using Samba on Windows

Using Windows Explorer under the Tools menu you can select "Map Network Drive" to have your CS home directory mounted as a drive letter (e.g. H:). You can also access your home directory by clicking on Start | Run, and entering "\\fs.cs.princeton.edu\cshome". (Note that your NetID is not part of the path. It is passed to the file server in the authentication.) If prompted for authentication, you must use your CS username and CIFS Password, as below:

Username: username
Password: [Your CS CIFS Password]

Using Samba on Linux/Unix

Under Linux you can map a Samba drive using 'cifs' (or 'smbfs' on older releases of Linux). Here is an example: